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America has been described by various terms such as melting pot and tossed salad, but what these terms are trying to convey is that America is a country of great diversity. The literature of this country reflects its population in its diversity of genres, themes, language, and voices. One of these voices is Toni Morrison, an author who knows and appreciates the power of language, and uses it. In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech she states, "The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers". The "vitality of language" of which Morrison speaks, may very well be the soul of the American novel, or at the very least, the soul of Morrison's novels, such as Sula, Beloved, and The Bluest Eye.

In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses her ability with language to take her readers into the black community in Lorraine, Ohio, and into the various levels of that society. She utilizes several points of view, both first person and third person omniscient, and universal themes such as love, hate, hope, despair, fear, courage, ugliness, and beauty to bring her characters and their struggles to life. The very universality of her themes provides a common point of contact that allows most readers to see in these people something of themselves or their life experience. For example, she shows a mother's love for a child when in the night, the mother's hand "adjusted the quilt, and rested a moment on my forehead" (14). This simple gesture conveys so much, and is familiar to many.

Morrison's powerful language lends depth and detail to every scene. She shows the pain and bewilderment of Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola over the blue-eyed blond ideal of beauty that is even perpetuated by their parents when they are given dolls that fit this mold. She brings to life the upper class "colored people" who were "neat and quiet" and who looked down on "niggers" who were "dirty and loud" (71), with language that flows like molasses on a warm day. "They come from Mobile, Aiken. From Newport News. From Marietta. From Merdian. And the sound of these places in their mouths make you think of love" (67).

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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Essay
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Beauty is dangerous, especially when you lack it. In the book "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, we witness the effects that beauty brings. Specifically the collapse of Pecola Breedlove, due to her belief that she did not hold beauty. The media in the 1940's as well as today imposes standards in which beauty is measured up to; but in reality beauty dwells within us all whether it's visible or not there's beauty in all; that beauty is unworthy if society brands you with the label of being ugly.... [tags: Bluest Eye Toni Morrison]

The Reinforcement of Racial Hierarchies in Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" and Neal's "The Black Arts Movement"
- Race and racial hierarchies are reinforced through the proliferation of a predominant, societal, white aesthetic and through the perceptions associated with physical characteristics. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison first illustrates the reinforcement of racial hierarchies through the proliferation of a predominant, societal white aesthetic by recounting passages from the Dick and Jane books, a standardization of family life. Next, “The Black Arts Movement” by Larry Neal demonstrates the reinforcement of racial hierarchies through the proliferation of a white aesthetic by discussing how Black culture, including Black art, is in danger if the white aesthetic is accepted by Black artists.... [tags: The Bluest Eye, The Black Arts Movement]:: 2 Works Cited

Racism in in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye Essay
- Both Toni Morrison's novel about an African American family in Ohio during the 1930s and 1940s, The Bluest Eye and Louise Erdrich;s novel about the Anishinabe tribe in the 1920s in North Dakota, Tracks are, in part, about seeing. Both novels examine the effects of a kind of seeing that is refracted through the lens of racism by subjects of racism themselves. Erdrich's Pauline Puyat and Morrison's Pecola Breedlove are crazy from their dealings with racism and themselves suffer from an internalized racism that is upheld and maintained by social and cultural structures within which they live.... [tags: Bluest Eye Essays]

Morrison's Bluest Eye Essay: Migration
- The Bluest Eye: Migration Morrison depicts a large part of African American culture when she places the characters in an urban area. The change of environment from the north to the south plays a key role in the loss of communal ties. African Americans are extremely affected given that they are displaced and are attempting to conform to northern cultural standards. The emphasis in the north is on material wealth and beauty, whereas the south is more family oriented. The migration may have displaced many people, however it does provide job opportunities as well as economic gain.... [tags: Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye]:: 1 Works Cited

Cinema in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye Essay
- Cinema in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, characters learn how to perform social roles though film. Pauline goes to the movies in search of a more glamorous identity. Instead, the unattainable beauty she sees onscreen reaffirms her low place in society. Laura Mulvey’s article, Visual and Other Pleasures, explains film’s ability to indoctrinate patriarchal social order. This ability is certainly applicable to Morrison’s novel. Film reinforces the Breedloves’ place in society, teaches Claudia to love Shirley Temple and constructs women as sexual objects for pleasure.... [tags: Toni Morrison Bluest Eye Essays]:: 2 Works Cited

Evil of Fulfillment in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye Essay
- Evil of Fulfillment The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, tells the sordid story of Pecola, a young colored girl, as she struggles to attain beauty, desperately praying for blue eyes. Depicting the fallacies in the storybook family, Morrison weaves the histories of the many colored town folk into the true definition of a family. Through intense metaphor and emotion, the ugliness of racial tension overcomes the search for beauty and in turn the search for love. Pecola, a twelve year old from a broken home, is first introduced when she is sent to live with Claudia (the narrator) and her family.... [tags: Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye]

Morrison's Bluest Eye Essay: Dying to Fit In
- The Bluest Eye: Dying to Fit In Claudia MacTeer in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye looks longingly upon society from the outside. Growing up the youngest in the family as well as in a racial minority leaves Claudia feeling excluded and left out. She desires a place within the group society has formed without her. She desires to fit in and be accepted. Claudia desperately wants to experience life to the fullest. She does not want to miss out on any event. Claudia's curiosity is often her conscious motivation to get involved, but the reasons that she acts the way she does go deeper than that.... [tags: Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye]

Morrison's Bluest Eye Essay: Self-Definition
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The Bluest Eye - Do Blondes Really Have More Fun? Essay
- The Bluest Eye - Do Blondes Really Have More Fun. America, the land of the free and the brave, a country where if you work hard enough you can have whatever you wish. All Pecola Breedlove wanted was to have blue eyes. Today, that dream would be easily fulfilled, but in 1941, it was unattainable. She bought into the belief that to have blond hair and blue eyes was the only way to obtain beauty. It is a belief that has dominated American culture since the nineteenth century. We must look a certain way, have a specific occupation, or live in a particular neighborhood if we are to fit into society.... [tags: Bluest Eye Essays]

Essay on Bluest Eye
- Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye reveals the trauma of an eleven-year-old African-American girl named Pecola Breedlove. This story takes place in the town of Lorain, Ohio during the 1940’s. It is told from the perspective of a young girl named Claudia MacTeer. She and her sister, Frieda, become witness to the terrible path that Pecola is forced to endure because she is not considered beautiful by society. Pecola chooses to hide from life behind her clouded dream of having the bluest of eyes so that those around her will view her as beautiful as the light skinned, blond haired, blue eyed girls that got so much favoritism.... [tags: essays research papers fc]:: 2 Works Cited

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She conveys the hopelessness and anger of taunting children with fierce, biting language, " They seem to have taken all their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred . . . and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages . . . "(55). She takes the reader into the mind of a helpless little black girl who looks into the mirror "trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, . . . that made her ignored or despised" (39), who tragically withdraws into her own reality where she sees herself with the ideal blue eyes, but is concerned that someone else may have "the bluest eyes in the whole world" (157).

Toni Morrison uses language to draw "imagined and possible lives" and lives that should be unimaginable, but exist. Her contribution to the American novel is the power of her language and the images that the language instills in the hearts and minds of her readers.